Airport Bloodshed Shows Wide Split on Pakistan’s Future

The Pakistani Taliban’s attack on
the country’s biggest airport that killed 36 people risks
claiming another casualty: Peace negotiations between the
militant group and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Direct talks have stalled since Sharif agreed to them for
the first time in March after pressure built to order an
offensive into the Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan near
the Afghan border. Finding common ground is next to impossible,
according to Mahmud Ali Durrani, a former national security
chief and ex-Pakistani ambassador to the U.S.

“Our agendas are totally different,” Durrani, a retired
major general in Pakistan’s army, said by phone. “The Taliban
want to spread their brand of Islam and they don’t compromise on
that. The government is talking of constitution, law, democracy.
There is no meeting ground.”

The breakdown in talks and uptick in attacks raises
questions about Sharif’s strategy and threatens to disrupt his
plans to attract investors to buy stakes in state-run companies
as part of an International Monetary Fund road map to revive the
economy. The late-night attack that began June 8 and a smaller
outbreak of gunfire at the airport today have added to security
concerns that have kept growth subdued.

‘Major Setback’

“Just when investor confidence for Pakistan was
increasing, this is a major setback,” Muzzammil Aslam, managing
director at Emerging Economics Research in Karachi, said by
phone. “The possibility for dialogue with the Taliban can now
be ruled out. The government and army were not on the same page,
but I guess now things will change.”

Karachi airport resumed operations today after suspending
flights for about an hour as militants fired guns at a
residential compound near the airport that is used by security
staff. Nobody was hurt and the two attackers escaped, Tahir Ali,
a spokesman of the airport security force, said by phone.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, known as the TTP, had
threatened more attacks yesterday while saying it was still
ready for “serious talks” with the government. The group, at
the forefront of an insurgency that has killed 50,000 people
since 2001, has demanded Sharif release prisoners before
allowing talks to progress on issues such as implementing its
version of Islamic Shariah law.

“Talks are dead,” said Shahzad Chaudhry, a former
Pakistan Air Force official. “Both sides will continue to
attack each other.”

Human Shields

The Jinnah International Airport, which handles all routine
domestic and international flights from Karachi, reopened
yesterday after security forces killed 10 Taliban fighters who
carried out a late-night attack on an aircraft maintenance
facility about two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the main terminal
building.

Flames and smoke billowed above the terminal in the attack,
which left 26 security personnel and workers at the airport
dead, including seven who whose bodies were recovered today from
a cold storage unit. No passengers were injured.

The attackers were armed with rocket launchers and planned
to take hostages to use as human shields, Nisar Ali Khan,
Pakistan’s Interior Minister, told reporters at the airport
yesterday. It took three hours to kill the militants, who also
brought food and medicine, he said.

“If we are attacked then there will be a complete and full
response,” Khan said. “But there is a way to it and it will be
in front of you. You need patience and tolerance. This will
require to unify and mobilize the entire Pakistani nation.”

Taliban Threat

Early morning air strikes killed 15 militants in the Tirah
valley near the border with Afghanistan, according to a text
message today by the military spokesman’s office.

The TTP, which called off a self-declared cease-fire on
April 26, said the attack was retaliation for military strikes
in Waziristan and the death of Hakimullah Mehsud, who was killed
in a U.S. drone strike last year. The group accused the
government of preparing for war in North Waziristan at the
behest of the U.S., which is planning to withdraw almost all of
its troops from neighboring Afghanistan by the end of 2016.

“Now the government should get ready for more,”
Shahidullah Shahid, a Taliban spokesman, said by phone
yesterday. Three Pakistani troops were killed yesterday in a
separate attack on a checkpoint in North Waziristan.

Pakistan has conducted attacks on militants over the past
month in Waziristan, where foreign fighters including Uzbeks
have gathered after U.S. troops ousted Afghanistan’s Taliban
regime in 2001. The attackers appeared to be from Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan, Shujaat Azeem, Sharif’s adviser on aviation, told
reporters in Karachi yesterday.

Economic Hub

The dominant faction of the Mehsud group, which controlled
the TTP until Hakimullah Mehsud’s death, on May 28 announced it
would disassociate itself from the TTP.

“The subsequent and ongoing battle for supremacy between
the two factions will prove to be deadly for Pakistan’s
security,” Sameer Patil, associate national security fellow at
Mumbai-based research group Gateway House, said in a statement.
“We can expect more attacks of this nature.”

Karachi is Pakistan’s economic hub and generates about half
the tax revenue of South Asia’s second-biggest economy. The port
and financial center is a transit point for everything from U.S.
military equipment to Afghan opium, and has recently seen
Taliban fighters taking control of parts of the city.

Stake Sales

Pakistan’s benchmark KSE-100 Index (KSE100) fell 0.1 percent as of
12:49 p.m. in Karachi, while the rupee -- among the world’s best
performers this year -- was little changed. Pakistan has
incurred $102.5 billion in costs due to incidents of terrorism
in the past 13 years, according to a finance ministry report
this month.

The government plans to sell stakes in Habib Bank Ltd.,
United Bank Ltd. and Allied Bank Ltd. to help reduce its fiscal
deficit to a seven-year low in the year starting July 1, Finance
Minister Ishaq Dar said last week. Pakistan seeks to boost
growth to an eight-year high of 5.1 percent in the coming fiscal
year from an estimated 4.1 percent.

The airport attack undermines any talks and gives the
government public support for an offensive against the Taliban
in Waziristan, according to Michael Kugelman, senior program
associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson
Center, a Washington policy group. Any talks are “destined to
fail” because of the Taliban demands for a strict
interpretation of Shariah law across Pakistan, he said.

“They have such divergent startling differences of how
life should be, there is no way they could reconcile each
other’s views,” Kugelman said, referring to Sharif’s
administration and the TTP. “They just do not see eye to eye.”